1. After this Job opened his mouth and cursed his day.
2. And Job spoke and said,
3. Let the day perish in which I was born, and the night which said, A man-child is conceived.
4. Let that day be darkness. Let not God look upon it from above, neither let the light shine upon it.
5. Let darkness and the shadow of death claim it. Let a cloud dwell upon it; Let the blackness of the day terrify it.
6. As for that night, let darkness seize upon it. Let it not rejoice among the days of the year, Let it not come into the number of the months.
7. Lo, let that night be barren; let no joyful voice come in it.
8. Let those curse it who curse the day, who are ready to stir up Leviathan.
9. Let the stars of its twilight be dark; let it look for light, but have none. Let it not see the eyelids of the dawn.
10. For it did not shut up the doors of my mother's womb, nor hide sorrow from my eyes.
11. Why did I not die from the womb, come from the womb and expire?
12. Why did the knees go before me; or why the breasts, that I should suck?
13. For now I should have lain still and been quiet; I should have slept. Then I would have been at rest
14. with kings and wise men of the earth, who built ruins for themselves,
15. or with princes who had gold, who filled their houses with silver;
16. or as a hidden untimely birth I would not have been, like infants who did not see light.
17. There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary are at rest;
18. the prisoners are at rest together; they hear not the voice of the slave driver.
19. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master.
20. Why is light given to one who is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul,
21. who is waiting for death, but it comes not; and dig for it more than for treasures?
22. They are rejoicing to exultation. They are glad when they can find the grave.
23. To a man whose way is hidden, God has made a hedge about him.
24. For my sighing comes before I eat, and my groanings are poured out like the waters.
25. For the thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of has come to me.
26. I was not in safety, nor did I have rest, nor was I quiet; yet trouble comes.